View green technologies as global public goods: PM

“Climate-friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods. This implies that the IPR regime applied to those goods should balance rewards for innovators with the need to promote the common good of humankind. Suitable mechanisms must be found that will provide incentives for developing new technologies while also facilitating their deployment in developing countries at affordable cost,” the PM said.

“Such an approach has been adopted successfully in the case of pharmaceutical technologies for the benefit of HIV/AIDS victims in developing countries. The moral case of a similar approach for protecting our planet and its life support system is equally compelling,” he said. “Technology and its diffusion will be a key element in meeting the challenge of climate change.”

Access to green technology on affordable prices is one of the main issues being discussed as part of the global climate change framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

The Prime Minister’s proposal found some support by the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yve de Boer as well,though he pointed out some practical difficulties in comparing the case with HIV/AIDS.

“We can of course learn from the HIV example but we must also realise that we are only dealing with one or two drugs manufactured by one or two pharmaceutical companies. There are hundreds and thousands of climate change technologies produced by hundreds and thousands of companies. So the situation is slightly more complicated here,” de Boer said.

Singh also talked about India’s proposal to set up an international network of Climate Innovation Centres which would expedite technology innovation and capacity-building in developing countries.